The Art/Lab Podcast: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture – Details, episodes & analysis

Daniela Molnar is a friend, a graduate of the first Art/Lab cohort, an accomplished poet and artist, and a brainy Jew trying to figure out how to be a responsible human living a life of meaning. Enjoy the convo!

Eleyna Fugman is the co-Founder and Director of TischPDX in Portland, a leadership development organization whose mission is to "Bolster the Leadership of Young and Marginalized Jews in Portland, OR." 

Eleyna and Rabbi Josh worked together back in 2016 in a Portland synagogue. In this conversation they reflect on the relationship between syagogues and the emerging Jewish world, the ways in which some younger Jews feel marginalized from such communities, what the Jewish future might hold, and more. Enjoy

Listen to find out!

My friend Rabbi Gavriel Goldfeder constatly strives for authenticity and growth in his life. That makes him a great haver (friend) and a good conversational partner. We talk about why Jewish wisdom is so powerful and why services are so often boring, whether our lives are just scripts that we act out, and what Gavriel would do if he were appointed Emperor of the Jews. Enjoy!

Professor Moshe Rachmuth and Rabbi Josh discuss Rachmuth's wide-ranging interest, what keeps him hopeful in the face of terrible events, his research on Israeli singer Noa and her political work, finding truth in an era of political scream-fests, Zionism(s) and Judaism(s), and more. Enjoy. 

In this week's episode of The Genesis I get to speak with Roy Kaufman, a smarty-pants with a political and comedic mind. We touch on sarcasm as (hilarious) Jewish trauma response, shamanism, the politics of the drugware, weed, and Roy's podcast. Roy is the Communications Director for Oregon's Attorney General but more important, a thoughtful Jewish guy with a lot of ideas to share. Enjoy. 

Metasabiya (aka Tammy) and Rabbi Josh get into it, exploring shifts in Jewish identity, post October 7th politics, Jews of color, racism on the left, Israeli punk, and more. Tammy is a brainy Jewish lady in Portland who has a useful perspective on these issues - she is an Israeli-born Jew of Ethiopian descent. She doesn't pull punches in this wide-ranging conversation, this inaugural podcast of The Genesis. 

Rabbi Brian Mayer joins us to discuss his new book and his organization, Religion Outsisde of the Box.  Rabbi Brian is a lot of fun to talk to as you'll see - but the conversation also gets very serious and even intense.  Enjoy!

This is an episode from a partner podcast, Unveiling Death, hosted by Rabbi Josh's dear friend Rabbi Jeffrey Weill. Rabbi Weill asked Rabbi Josh and antoher dear friend Rabbi Matt Reimer to have a discussion on the anniversary of October 7th.

An unusual episode this week - Rabbi Josh is the interlocutor instead of the interviewer as he and his friend Shawn Weiss take up the war in Israel. The two have different takes on how to think about the meaning of the War and its implications, and how to reckon with the values at stake. They differ on how to think about the war but do so without polemics, cheap shots, labels or acrimony. Instead they approach it as two peole who care about Jewish life and values, who are profoundly troubled by the war and its toll, and its future.

Among many other things Shawn Weiss is a rabbincal student and an author. You can read some of his essays on various aspects of Jewish life at 

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/author/shawn-aron-weiss/